The Foundation for Child Development issued a scary report last week arguing that the recession could result in children—particularly poor and very young kids—eating even more cheap, low-quality, unhealthy food than they currently do, as cash-strapped parents are forced to substitute fast food and junk food for more nutritious fare in the current economy. “There is a concern with ‘recession obesity’ apart from the general trend toward an increasing number of obese American children,” said Kenneth Land, project director of the foundation’s Youth Well-Being Index Project, which issues an annual composite assessment of how U.S. kids are faring in terms of education and health.

In issuing the report, the foundation and child advocates called for the creation of policies that help families during tough economic times and strengthen early childhood education. “We should be doing a lot more to invest in children and youth, and it’s pretty clear we’re not doing that,” Ruby Takanishi, president of the Foundation for Child Development, said June 3 during a presentation of the foundation’s report.

The idea of the recession erasing the progress that has already been made on the childhood nutrition front is pretty frightening. And, although the nation’s poorest children are likely to suffer the most nutritionally (and in many other ways) from the economic crisis, not everyone believes the economy will have parents turning toward the cheapest food possible in an effort to weather the economic storm.

In fact, some people argue that the economy is driving parents to expect more value from the products they purchase, and this could present a competitive advantage for those companies selling products that truly pack a healthy punch. “In this poor economic time, parents are a lot more conscious of how they spend their food money,” Denise Devine, president and CEO of Froose, which makes a patented children’s beverage that combines organic whole fruit and whole grains, told Nutrition Business Journal. “The value proposition is so much more important these days. Why would you pay more for a 50% watered down juice? Half the time [those products] don’t give your child any nutritional value. My product is not just a juice with isolated vitamins. It is a whole food that has all of these wonderful things, including gluten-free brown rice.”

As a mother who is more focused than ever on keeping her kids healthy by feeding them nutritious foods, I tend to agree with Devine on this one. But I also think that much more needs to be done to make healthier foods available, accessible and affordable to all children, especially in the current economic environment, and I’m hoping President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture live up to their stated promise of making improved children’s nutrition a top priority. In addition, I urge more companies to invest in helping make healthy food and nutrients available to children in need, such as Revolution Foods is doing by supporting bringing healthy school lunches to inner-city schools and Vitamin Angels is doing through its many programs here in the United States and abroad.

NBJ’s newest report—Healthy Kids’ Market Report: Breaking the Entry Barrier—was created to help companies operating in, working to move in to or simply evaluating the U.S. healthy kids’ product market better understand this market and its opportunities and challenges. Order your copy of the report via the NBJ Website.

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Dietary supplements are taking a beating in the mainstream press these days, but a new study funded by the Natural Products Foundation provides more positive fodder about the economic benefits provided by the supplements industry. According to the study, the dietary supplements industry contributes about $61 billion annually to the U.S. economy, supports more than 450,000 jobs and paid more than $10 billion in taxes in 2006.

“Most industry assessments primarily focus on sales, but this is really just the tip of the iceberg,” said Tracy Taylor, executive director of the Natural Products Foundation. “The labor, materials and technology necessary to move each product from a raw material to the final sale cause a whole spectrum of economic consequences.” Preliminary Nutrition Business Journal estimates peg 2008 U.S. consumer sales of dietary supplements at about $25 billion.

The Economic Impact Report, completed by Dobson | DaVanzo, a Washington D.C.-based economic research firm, is the first to quantify the dietary supplement industry’s overall financial impact on the national economy by considering such contributing factors as supply, production, research, direct employment, manufacturing, taxes, and the extended financial effects these factors produce.

NBJ’s upcoming U.S. Nutrition Industry Overview double issue, which will publish in July, will offer more details about the Natural Products Foundation’s Economic Impact Report, as well as 2008 sales and growth estimates by product segment and channel for dietary supplements and other nutrition industry product categories. To order your copy of the issue, subscribe to NBJ or download a free 32-page sample issue of the journal, go to www.nutritionbusinessjournal.com.

Related stories:

Sports Illustrated Slams Supplements and DSHEA

U.S. Nutrition Industry Prospers in 2007, Despite Economic Slump

Special Feature: Supplement Industry Makes its Case for Healthcare Cost Saving

Mainstream press coverage of the dietary supplement and healthy food and beverage markets has been anything but positive this week, and the growing barrage of negative news could be a sign of things to come for the U.S. nutrition industry—particularly if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to make headlines with what appears to be a stricter regulatory enforcement stance under the new Obama Administration.

On May 13, ABC World News with Charles Gibson included a report about FDA’s warning to General Mills regarding the cholesterol-lowering claims the company is making for its popular Cheerios cereal. This news broke the day before and triggered many print and blog stories, but I was surprised to see ABC News give it more than a minute of prime-time news coverage and include in the piece a broader message that a growing number of food manufacturers are duping Americans with the misleading health claims they put on their products.

Dietary supplements have fared no better this week. On May 12, David Epstein wrote a scathing piece on SI.com (the Sports Illustrated Website) about the adverse health events consumers reported to the FDA in 2008 about dietary supplements. The examples listed in the SI.com piece mostly discuss fringe offerings from small companies and include products with names such as Nuclear Garbage and Fireball Liquifusion. However, Epstein did address more popular, mainstream products in his piece: “Many of the reports concern extremely popular products, like Bayer’s One-A-Day Weight Smart Advanced, which lists increased heart rate—one of the common complaints—in its product information, according to the reports,” Epstein wrote. “The most popular brands and products tend to have the most reports: Herbalife, VPX, BSN, GNC, 5-Hour Energy—and there are 14 reports about Hydroxycut, which was recalled by MuscleTech earlier this month after the FDA warned consumers that it could cause liver damage and had contributed to the death of a teenager in 2007.”

By all accounts, the serious adverse event reporting (SAER) system, which went into effect in December 2007, is good for the supplement industry because it is actually helping to demonstrate the safety profile of dietary supplements. “Data shows the SAER system is functioning as a signal generator and demonstrating the safety of our class of goods,” American Herbal Products Association President Michael McGuffin told attendees of the SupplySide East Trade Show and Convention last month. “The dietary supplement industry fought hard for this good law, and AHPA is encouraged to see it working so well in its first six months.” According to AHPA, the number of supplement AERS submitted between Jan. 1, 2008 and June 30, 2008, were small compared to drug AERs—but you wouldn’t have known that from the SI.com piece.

Epstein’s story—which focuses on several products that in name alone do not appear to be helping boost the credibility of the supplements industry (Who names a supplement product Nuclear Garbage?)—did not come at a good time for the dietary supplement industry, which was already feeling the heat after Iovate Sciences’ recall of its popular Hydroxycut products earlier this month. The SI.com piece also emphasizes the damage a few allegedly bad products can inflict on the entire industry, especially in the age of the Internet.

One lesson I’m taking away from the news coverage the industry has garnered this week is that weeding out potentially dangerous products and pushing all companies to take regulatory compliance seriously are only going to grow in importance under today’s FDA, which certainly showed its muscle with the Cheerios warning. As Bruce Silverglade, legal director of the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, told Ad Age regarding the General Mills warning: “[FDA is] signaling the rest of the industry that the agency is not going to let a big market leader get away with [false or misleading claims] and won’t let anybody else get away, either.”

Related links:

FDA to General Mills: Cholesterol Claims Render Cheerios a Drug

How Worrisome is the Hydroxycut Recall for the Dietary Supplement Industry?

Breakfast Foods Look to Healthy and Functional Platforms for Growth

Over the last several months, the NBJ team has been deeply immersed in studying, researching, analyzing and scrutinizing the U.S. healthy children’s market for our U.S. Healthy Kids’ Market Overview issue (which is hot off the presses this week). The more I learn about childhood obesity and the food our kids are eating, the more convinced I become that the nutrition industry must step up and address this problem head on. I mean, heck, we’re living in a country where kids eat more French fries than they do vegetables.

Sure, progress is being made in improving the way our children eat, and this industry is playing an important role in educating parents and kids about nutrition and in rolling out healthier food and beverage offerings for kids. Yet, so much more could be done to create even-better-for-you products that prime children for a lifetime of healthier eating. I’m not talking about organic versions of candy or cookies, but rather tasty, nutrient-dense foods and beverages that help teach kids at an early age to appreciate and crave healthy, whole food fare.

In fact, I believe a convergence of forces—the Obama administration’s focus on children’s nutrition, the childhood obesity epidemic, parents’ growing concern over food quality and safety, and even the troubled economy—is creating a “sweet spot” in the kids’ market for the U.S. nutrition industry. Yes, children’s products in general are hot, but the real growth is likely to be in natural and organic offerings that are truly healthy and free from long ingredient lists, artificial colors and preservatives, high-fructose corn syrup and even common allergens, such as gluten and nuts. As our research and interviews with more than 25 companies revealed, parents are proving increasingly willing to pay for such products for their kids, even if it means scrimping on something for themselves in the current economy.

On May 28, NBJ will host a Web seminar that is designed to help companies evaluate, break into and succeed in the U.S. healthy kids’ market. Along with providing an overview of children’s product sales by category, we’ll delve into product trends and opportunities, finance and investment options for healthy kids’ product companies, and advice on how to target and effectively communicate with mothers from a moms marketing expert. If your company is operating in, attempting to move into or simply evaluating the children’s nutrition market, you’ll want to attend this Web seminar. To register, contact Chris Lasonde at clasonde@nutritionbusiness.com.

Also in May, NBJ will publish our in-depth report on the U.S. Healthy Kids’ Market.

Related links:

U.S. Healthy Kids’ Market Positioned to Tackle Obesity and Other Top Health Issues

Renegade Lunch Lady Takes on School Lunch Programs

Kids’ Obesity Epidemic Spurs Paradigm Shift in Schools’ Vending Machine Policies

Researchers in Europe have pinpointed another benefit of drinking water: When children consume more H2O at school, they are less likely to become overweight. That’s the finding of a new study published in the April 2009 issue of the journal Pediatrics. In the study, researchers found that adding drinking fountains and classroom lessons that promote the benefits of water consumption to 32 elementary schools in the socially deprived areas of two German cities reduced the risk of children becoming overweight by 31%.

The study leaves many questions unanswered—such as how water intervention affected a child’s weight risk and whether increased water consumption prompted kids to consume fewer calories during the day. But it also showed that simple changes can help reduce the risk of obesity for our children, particularly when there is an education component involved. This alone makes me appreciate the fact that my son’s kindergarten teacher is adamant about parents sending their kids to school every day with a filled water bottle.

Nutrition Business Journal will be addressing the issue of childhood obesity in our upcoming Healthy Kids issue, which publishes later this month. The issue will include stories about school vending machine policies and healthier vending options and a Q&A with Ann Cooper, also known as the Renegade Lunch Lady and author of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children. Also featured is a discussion with Vitamin Angels Founder and President Howard Schiffer about how the nutrition industry is helping his organization bring needed vitamins to more than 10 million children globally. To order a copy of the issue, subscribe to NBJ or download a free 32-page sample issue of the journal, go to www.nutritionbusinessjournal.com.

Related links:

Thirsty Market for Kids’ Beverages

Coca-Cola Company in Hot Water

National Vending Machine Company Launches Healthy Snack Program